Two notes before we get started. First off, there should always be a distinction between “favorite” and “best” movie. There may be better-made, more “important” movies I’ve left off this list that just did not perfectly connect with or entertain me. I tried to strike a balance between technical achievement and my experience taking in the story for the first time. Secondly, everyone will always have blind spots every year. Mine for 2023 are The Iron Claw, All of Us Strangers, The Zone of Interest, and The Boy and Heron. Maybe they would’ve made it on this list! Who knows! Otherwise, I did my damnedest to watch as many bangers and duds from a decent year of movies. On to the list!
Honorable Mentions: The Killer (David Fincher); Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part 1 (Christopher McQuarrie); Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Jonathan M. Goldstein & John Francis Daley); The Artifice Girl (Franklin Ritch); Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (James Gunn)
In a year of supreme superhero stumbling, writer/director James Gunn’s trilogy capper is a standout. Gunn has always had a deft hand at pulling off these movies: he’s an engaging, visual storyteller with the ability to balance heartwarming sincerity with laughs and action. (The ironic shadow around this film’s release is that Gunn has cut ties with Marvel to run their effective rival at DC, and I’m excited to see what he can build.) Guardians Vol. 3 has a sense of finality and stakes in a landscape of similar movies that don’t know how to have a conclusive ending or shoehorn set-ups for five more spin-offs. The Guardians team continues to be unique and hilarious, with each member given a compelling arc and moments to really shine. They also find themselves challenged by one the best and chilling Marvel villains to date. The marketing for this movie teased a tear-jerking goodbye to this mismatched group of losers, and it delivers on that promise.
9. Past Lives (Celine Song)
For her directorial debut, Celine Song’s Past Lives is a raw romantic drama, clearly assembled from personal experience, about roads untaken in life. It follows two Korean childhood friends (played in adulthood by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo) whose friendship is interrupted when Lee’s character, Nora, moves to Toronto. They reconnect years later with Nora now married (John Magaro) and the results are compelling and uncomfortable. It explores the usual “what could’ve happened” but there’s an unaddressed tension between Nora’s two lives that are very much represented by two distinct cultures, and the strange guilt and friction wedged in her relationship with her husband. It’s a film that asks a lot of questions and doesn’t provide answers, exploring them in honest and human ways.
8. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Jacquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, & Justin K. Thompson)
It’s been five years since Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse thrilled audiences and critics with it’s exciting, kinetic animation. The follow-up, Across the Spider-Verse, not only expands the stories of Miles, Gwen, and Peter B. Parker, but also expands the visual palette, introducing various animation styles as it explores different spider-universes. It’s a gorgeous, mesmerizing display and a challenge to its blockbuster peers to step up their game. The only knock on the film is it’s cliffhanger ending that somewhat robs the movie of feeling like a complete story. As superhero movies try (and fail and fail) to excite audiences with multiversal storytelling, it appears the Spider-Verse movies have eaten everyone’s lunch.
7. Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)
This was a stunning theatrical experience. The Japanese filmmakers return Godzilla to its 1950s nuclear origins. The beast isn’t the modernized protector of humanity; instead, Minus One is set in post-World War II Japan, capturing the country’s nuclear anxieties manifesting itself in Godzilla, an unstoppable force of nature hellbent on destruction. Notwithstanding some spectacular Godzilla sequences—impressive in 2023 to make monster destruction feel visceral and terrifying, including an updated “atomic breath” that left me stunned—but the human story is why this movie made an impact. It deals with survivor’s guilt, post-war trauma, found family, and a surprising tale of redemption. (It’s also a minor theatrical upset: powerful word-of-mouth and positive reactions have led to broken box office records and an extended U.S. theatrical window.)
6. BlackBerry (Matt Johnson)
There’s a recent trend of true stories of industry or product titans to varying degrees of success (the good: Air; the OK: Tetris; the not great: The Beanie Bubble), but BlackBerry is the standout. A big part of this is the trio of performances at the top: Jay Baruchel, Matt Johnson (who also directed the movie), and particularly it’s Always Sunny’s Glenn Howerton, who delivers some all-time tirades. It’s not that the story is even that surprising; these bio-corpo-dramas are pretty cyclical that way, but the script and performances are so sharp, funny, and breezy that BlackBerry is one of the more entertaining and engaging watches I’ve had all year.
5. John Wick: Chapter 4 (Chad Stahelski)
It’s three-hour runtime may be a non-starter for some, and sure, there’s an argument for 40 minutes of trimming, but I never felt the clock with Wick‘s stunning cinematography and one of our last, great movie stars throwing himself into impressive, relentless, over-the-top, gun-fu chaos. I don’t begrudge those who prefer the franchise’s scrappy, B-list beginnings, but I’ve enjoyed it’s expansion into a sprawling, absurd, assassin saga. Some installments delve too much into the lore and lose some of the charming mystique, but this latest strikes the best balance. With the addition of Donnie Yen’s blind assassin, Shamier Anderon’s hungry amateur, and Bill Skarsgård’s villianous Marquis Vincent de Gramont, Chapter 4 continues the propulsive, pulpy story all the way to its outrageous, hilarious, and ultimately satisfying final sequence. Did I mention it looks amazing?
4. The Holdovers (Alexander Payne)
Already flagged as a new Christmas classic, The Holdovers is a conscious callback to late-60s, early-70s cinema. Paul Giammati is a curmudgeonly teacher tasked with staying on campus over the holidays with the handful of unlucky, stranded, private-school boys. As you might expect, Giammati is fantastic, and newcomer Dominic Sessa (one of the boys holding over) steals the movie in his first acting role. Director Alexander Payne employs an array of filmmaking techniques straight from decades-past so the movie feels like you’re in 1970, most of all the general vibe and balance of sentimentality and caustic realism. This movie could’ve slipped into schmaltz on several occasions, but Payne isn’t afraid to let the characters feel flawed and obnoxious, which lets them—and the story—feel true to life.
3. Theater Camp (Molly Gordon & Nick Lieberman)
I’m not sure how well this plays to anyone unfamiliar with theater kids, but this is the hardest I’ve laughed all year. The collection of writers and directors—Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, Noah Galvin, and Ben Platt, who all star in the film, minus Lieberman—nail the over-the-top personalities in a modern-day Waiting for Guffman. The story follows a collection of young theater teachers attempting to save their summer camp from bankruptcy after the director ends up in a coma. The caricatures are broad and easy targets to lampoon, but what elevates the movie is the surprising amount of heart squeezed into genuine laughs.
2. Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)
Between this and The Irishman, I hope Scorsese continues to finagle various studios and streamers to give him carte blanche on budgets and running time because once every few years he drops long, sprawling meditations on violence and shitty people. Killers of the Flower Moon is the true crime story of systematic murders of Osage members in a bid to steal up oil rights. The upsetting sequence of events is supported by incredible performances: Lily Gladstone as a stoic, inevitable victim; Leonardo DiCaprio as a bumbling, narcissistic accessory; and Robert De Niro as an unsettling representation of smiling evil. The film’s length plays in its favor, letting audiences sit uncomfortably as the atrocities unfold onscreen.
1. Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
Christopher Nolan is one of the surest bets in Hollywood and continues to use his power for good. For his latest endeavor, he commandingly packages the unwieldy story of the man behind the atomic bomb and the personal fallout of that deadly invention. Masterful editing and pacing transform this from a three-hour, cliched slog into a gripping, brisk, sensory thrill ride. There’s a reason a lengthy biopic, compromised mostly of men in suits talking around tables, crept just shy of $1 billion at the box office—something many trusted franchises failed to accomplish this year. (An impossible-to-predict marketing phenomenon of Barbenheimer didn’t hurt either.) The film delivers on every level of production: the performances of Cillian Murphy and the jaw-dropping assemblage of supporting cast; Ludwig Göransson’s pulsing score; the stunning cinematography; the godly, seismic sound design. The trinity test takes full advantage of Nolan’s insistence on IMAX cameras and sound apparatus, but the aftermath is the real meat of the film (one horrific, dissociative sequence in particular stands out as one of Nolan’s finest). Finally, Nolan knows how to end his movies, regularly delivering soaring closing minutes and moments of even his weakest films. Oppenheimer is no different: it builds and maintains an ascending fever pitch all the way to its chilling, ominous, overwhelming final image. What a picture!
